According to a new study the war in Iraq has cost the lives of 655,000 Iraqis. Saddam Hussein was a terrible dictator, but can we really say we’ve made the life of the average Iraqi better? We’ve failed to make ourselves safer and we’ve failed to improve the situation for the Iraqi people. How then do we continue to defend this choice to go to war?
While I think the Iraq war was a misguided adventure, and was and continues to be a strategic nightmare, the argument could be made that Hussein was responsible for far more than that. Also, they extrapolated from interview data to arrive at that number — which is a questionable method.
Did you really read the article? It states that “experts” question the estimate and deem it political. Most estimates put the loss closer to 55,000. Quite a difference.
“…can we really say we’ve made the life of the average Iraqi better?”
My impression is: in Baghdad, no. Worse. / In lots of (but not all) other regions of the country, yes, Better.
“How then do we continue to defend this choice to go to war?”
That choice remains defensible, though not on the imminent-danger WMD grounds presented to us at the time the choice was made. / It is defensible ~ I don’t necessarily say sufficiently Justified, but Defensible ~ on grounds of human liberation from an extreme, sadistic, mass-murderous, warmongering, hegemonistic tyranny.
What is Not defensible is our poor “postwar” planning, or Lack thereof, which has resulted in so many Iraqis gaining political Freedom only at an intolerably lethal price in loss of public Order. Such uncontrolled violence, approaching anarchy, destroys the benefits (and the allure) of liberty, and will in due course cause Any people, anywhere, to accept (or as in this case, Re-accept) orderly Dictatorship as the preferable alternative to chaotic Democracy.
BUT the presently relevant Question is, not was the Choice right or wrong, good or bad, but rather: How & When can we extricate ourselves in such a way that the Iraqis will still have some glimmer of a chance, on their own, to restore Order AND retain Freedom?
Of course it’s quite Possible that the answer has by now become: We Can’t. Too late. No Way, Never (no way never no more / skip the clap-claps :)
With all due respect, I don’t think anyone here who hasn’t spent significant time in Iraq before and after the war could tell you for certain if things are better or worse in the outlying parts of the country.
Seems to me that we only have the word of the folks who have been there, and it appears to me that the majority of the people who have been there - soldiers, aid workers, journalists, John Warner - think things are getting worse.
As for the study, I love how the Republicans are calling this “politically motivated.” So Johns Hopkins and The Lancet are mouthpieces for the DNC but the AEI (former employer of Mrs. Cheney) and Fox News (headed by Republican operative Roger Ailes)aren’t for the RNC? Puuhlleeeeeease!!
Next thing you know the Republicans will be claiming that reality is politically motivated (hat tip to Stephen Colbert).
“We’ve failed to make ourselves safer . . . .”
Ugh. I roll my eyes every time this silly talking point is trotted out, because to KNOW such a thing with anything approaching the degree if misplaced certainty with which war critics insist upon it requires an infinitely complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, to say nothing of constructing a complete alternate history of the world had the Iraq war not have occurred. We’re talking about counting angels on the head of a pin here:
“Seems to me that we only have the word of the folks who have been there, and it appears to me that the majority of the people who have been there - soldiers, aid workers, journalists, John Warner - think things are getting worse.”
Heh. Seems to me that while journalists, politicians and aid workers may think things are getting worse (at the very least because each may very well have an agenda at work), SOLDIERS do NOT. Most of the accounts I’ve read from soldiers in Iraq diverge significantly from the accounts of those others. A&A, if you have some kind of poll or other resource to back up your claim that a majority of soldiers in Iraq think things are getting worse, I’d love to see it. But just because you think it’s so certainly doesn’t make it so . . .
This is fascinating and thank you for linking to it dcl. This is why:
I had already read this story and when I saw you post I figured I would talk about the survey especially since I noticed you didn’t comment on what experts and critics are saying about it. Due diligence though, I checked the link and instead of getting the AP story I read, I get CNN’s take on it.
“A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates. The timing of the survey’s release, just a few weeks before the U.S. congressional elections, led one expert to call it “politics.”
In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.”
Now what did CNN say for the first two:
“War has wiped out about 655,000 Iraqis or more than 500 people a day since the U.S.-led invasion, a new study reports.
Violence including gunfire and bombs caused the majority of deaths but thousands of people died from worsening health and environmental conditions directly related to the conflict that began in 2003, U.S. and Iraqi public health researchers said.”
AP notes one critical expert (AP article lists him as Anthony Cordesman), the methodology used, and that there is a timing issue on the study. You have to get deep into the CNN story to find that. Also, CNN neglected to say this, again from AP:
“The work updates an earlier Johns Hopkins study _ that one was released just before the November 2005 presidential election. At the time, the lead researcher, Les Roberts of Hopkins, said the timing was deliberate. Many of the same researchers were involved in the latest estimate.”
So now, not only has this work been used politically, it has been released with a political motive. Further, this study conflicts with US, Iraqi, Civilian (i.e., Iraqi Body Count [no Bush lover at all]), and UN numbers.
So, the numbers conflict with multiple reputable (somewhat in the UN’s case) organizations that differ politically, its being released and timed for political purposes, there is disagreement over the methodology, and its entirely based through interviews, not statistics.
A) 49,000 (The high estimate from Iraqi Body Count, private civilian group)
B) 25,000 (The estimate from the US Army)
C) 50,000 (Iraqi Health Ministry)
D) 600,000 (Lancet)
Now, are you telling me I have to throw out the three reputable ones and go with the outlier? Why? Because it fits your view on the war?
Here’s a little tidbit on the Lancet’s 2004 study, from that rightwing bastion, SLATE.COM:
“‘We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.’
Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I’ll spell it out in plain Englishâ€â€?which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain languageâ€â€?98,000â€â€?is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)
This isn’t an estimate. It’s a dart board.”
This study sucks. Period. I hope MIT gets their money back, because its a load of interview crap.
A. The accuracy of the figures.
B. How much I respect Joe Mama
C. The fact that Republicans are decrying this study as political even though it comes from a well-respected University and a medical journal with no political agenda to speak of?
“The fact that Republicans are decrying this study as political even though it comes from a well-respected University and a medical journal with no political agenda to speak of?”
The people who released their 2004 study admitted that the timing at least was, in fact, politically motivated. Lojo mentioned it earlier, but apparently you missed it. A lot of the same people are involved with this study.
So yes, it seems to me to be a fair criticism that it’s politically biased.
And for the record, the “study” polled a grand total of 629 deaths. Somehow they managed to extrapolate 655,000 deaths from that total of 629.
For the most part I am seeing the study called politically motivated (which is a forgone conclusion since researchers admit as such). I see that I have referenced Lancet when referring to the study so I apologize for the lack of clarity. Consider the following a correction in that my comments are directed towards the study. I am unconcerned about the Lancet’s or John Hopkin’s or MIT’s motives behind it, though I have to question their determination to fund an update after the first one was so heavily discredited and critically panned.
Actually, it was about 300 deaths. The 655,000 figure refers to violent deaths and in their study, they extrapoliated that from a number of about high 300’s (I forget the exact off the top of my head).
If you go with the U.S. Military numbers, 25,000 Iraqis have died as a result of this war. That is about half of the number of Americans who die each year in auto accidents on U.S. roads. Also, 25,000 is a little more than the number of U.S. troops who have been wounded in Iraq. May I remind you that the U.S. Military is the best equipped and trained Military in the world, so wounding 22,000+ in three years without bombers, cruise missiles or tow missiles is quite an accomplishment.
I have a very hard time believing that three years of constant warfare, with dozens if not hundreds of bodies showing up on the streets of Baghdad everyday, has resulted in so few deaths in Iraq. If you want to doubt the Lancet methodology, then by God you’d better question the U.S. Military methodology as well.
Glad to see that you appear to have some perspective on the numbers of casualties in Iraq, Max. It’s just too bad that between the choices of concluding that 1) those numbers are relatively low, so perhaps things aren’t quite as bad in Iraq as we’re led to believe, or 2) those numbers are relatively low, so Bush/the gov’t/the military must be cooking the books, you’ve chosen to believe the latter.
The numbers from the Lancet article represent “excess” deaths, as opposed to straight killings. That doesn’t mean that the US military would have to be explicity responsible; it means total deaths due to factors such as lack of clean water, lack of power, “insurgent” killings or whatever we’re calling ethnic and religious cleansings these days, etc.
The methodology has in fact been used in other recent wars. It’s challenging to get a straight sample in a war zone, hence the use of cluster sampling. This is not an outrageous approach.
An earlier poster asked why they should believe the outlier number. The numbers cited were not comparable measures. The Iraqi Body Count is based on press accounts that can be cross-referenced. I have no idea what the Iraqi Health Ministry estimates are based on. As for the US Army figures, well considering that General Franks said that they don’t do body counts, then presumably that is an estimate as well, based on something other than hard body counts.
I’d also point out that it’s in the interest of the Bush Administration and to a lesser extent the Joint Chiefs to not draw attention to the probable affects of applying traditional warfighting tactics to a counter-insurgency conflict. When the war started and was state v state, shock and awe bombing could only have been but so precise. Now, calling in localized airstrikes on houses sheltering actual or suspected insurgents on a daily basis means that civilians are getting killed on a daily basis, for being in the way. I am NOT making a judgement on the individual troops; they didn’t put themselves in that situation.
Long story short, I don’t know if 655,000 more Iraqis have died than might have otherwise had the US not invaded. But ripple effects could have very easily hastened many deaths, just as was the case during the years of sanctions when the Hussein regime stayed fat and watched infant mortality etc., skyrocket. And the fact that there are varying estimates of different populations of the dead doesn’t mean that any higher number is automatically wrong.
They describe how they select their sample … “The total population is then divided by the number of clusters to give the sampling interval. If we were to visit 30 clusters in a county with a population of 120,000, our sampling interval would be 120,000 ÷ 30 = 4000. This means every 4000th person in the county would live in one of the clusters we will want to visit. We then list all the towns in the county by their population (in any order). Our first cluster is the town where person 4000 lives, our second cluster is in the town where person 8000 lives, the third cluster is where person 12,000 lives, and so on until we have our 30 clusters. We really don’t need to know who person 4000 is, just the town where he or she lives.” … and so on … OK …
So that is 26,000,000 for 50 samples … 26,000,000/50 = 520,000 … OK so far …
Let’s try a gedanken …
Let us apply their methodology to number of folk killed by vehicles in cross-walks at traffic-light-controlled intersections …
What is that, you say ? “But, places less than 520,000 population will have very few of those intersections !” “You will oversample from very urban areas, which will bias you towards higher numbers than really occur.” “In Amish communities, on Native American reservations, in Alaska, over most of Kansas or Montana, how many will you find ?” …
OK … so apply equivalent thought to the report … Baghdad alone has not quite 25% of the country’s population and gets 12 clusters … the 8 provinces with the lowest populations are approximately the same total as Baghdad - and get 7 clusters for 8 provinces … and with a little arithmetic, we find an interesting comparison in the numbers …
So - IF the survey methodology is SO accurate, where the $@$#@ does the low end almost-doubling to high end 50% higher actually come from for roughly equivalent population numbers ?
Or - if you’re still convinced by the report, consider comparing the map in page 9 of the study with this map …
Then consider that this is the Lancet’s second October no-longer-a-surprise …
I would accept that except that the Army and the study use two different sets of methodology. The army is counting by bodies, combat reports, and morgue counts. The study entirely uses interviews with civilian families.
Furthermore, it does not even attempt to distinguish between whether a death is for a combatant or non-combatant. An important distinction I would think.
I’m not jumping on this study because of the results. I can accept and will review bad news and news contradictory to my own position, but this study is deeply flawed. I think the Army is undercutting the count and I think 50,000 is a fair estimate. But 12x that? No way.
“Robert Blendon, director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, said interviewing urban dwellers chosen at random was “the best of what you can expect in a war zone.â€?
But he said the number of deaths in the families interviewed � 547 in the post-invasion period versus 82 in a similar period before the invasion � was too few to extrapolate up to more than 600,000 deaths across the country.
Donald Berry, chairman of biostatistics at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was even more troubled by the study, which he said had “a tone of accuracy that’s just inappropriate.â€? ”
DC Trojan - “I am NOT making a judgement {sic} on the individual troops; they didn’t put themselves in that situation.” - perhaps you *should* be making a judgment on the individual troops (who are the “insurgency”) who put themselves amongst the civilians so as to use the civilians as ‘human shields’ … if the “insrugents were not putting themselves in the situation of being amongst the civilians, then the civilians would not be being killed in anything like the numbers about which we are all unhappy …
You might also consider that, if the “insurgents” stopped all attacks for the next year, how many civilians would the Coalition Troops kill during that year ?
If the Coalition Troops stopped all attacks for the next year, do you have *any* reason to believe that the “insurgents” would stop attacking civilians and anyone else they felt like attacking ?
So this is what a complete chump looks like. Thanks for the demo.
(Claiming the people who released the October 2004 fantasy “study” about “100,000 civilian deaths caused by the invasion” have “no political agenda to speak of” marks you as either utterly clueless or dishonest. Which is it?
Sorry, but teh rest of your post isn’t worth responding to. You’re, at best, a chump who is utterly clueless about the world. Nothing you say matters.
www.iraqbodycount.org, often criticized for offering inflated civilian death figures, is now criticizing the Lancet study for offering inflated civilian death figures:
October 11th, 2006 at 12:14:12 pm
While I think the Iraq war was a misguided adventure, and was and continues to be a strategic nightmare, the argument could be made that Hussein was responsible for far more than that. Also, they extrapolated from interview data to arrive at that number — which is a questionable method.
October 11th, 2006 at 12:58:39 pm
Did you really read the article? It states that “experts” question the estimate and deem it political. Most estimates put the loss closer to 55,000. Quite a difference.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:10:42 pm
“…can we really say we’ve made the life of the average Iraqi better?”
My impression is: in Baghdad, no. Worse. / In lots of (but not all) other regions of the country, yes, Better.
“How then do we continue to defend this choice to go to war?”
That choice remains defensible, though not on the imminent-danger WMD grounds presented to us at the time the choice was made. / It is defensible ~ I don’t necessarily say sufficiently Justified, but Defensible ~ on grounds of human liberation from an extreme, sadistic, mass-murderous, warmongering, hegemonistic tyranny.
What is Not defensible is our poor “postwar” planning, or Lack thereof, which has resulted in so many Iraqis gaining political Freedom only at an intolerably lethal price in loss of public Order. Such uncontrolled violence, approaching anarchy, destroys the benefits (and the allure) of liberty, and will in due course cause Any people, anywhere, to accept (or as in this case, Re-accept) orderly Dictatorship as the preferable alternative to chaotic Democracy.
BUT the presently relevant Question is, not was the Choice right or wrong, good or bad, but rather: How & When can we extricate ourselves in such a way that the Iraqis will still have some glimmer of a chance, on their own, to restore Order AND retain Freedom?
Of course it’s quite Possible that the answer has by now become: We Can’t. Too late. No Way, Never (no way never no more / skip the clap-claps :)
But I don’t believe that. / Yet. :|
October 11th, 2006 at 1:48:04 pm
Joe-
With all due respect, I don’t think anyone here who hasn’t spent significant time in Iraq before and after the war could tell you for certain if things are better or worse in the outlying parts of the country.
Seems to me that we only have the word of the folks who have been there, and it appears to me that the majority of the people who have been there - soldiers, aid workers, journalists, John Warner - think things are getting worse.
As for the study, I love how the Republicans are calling this “politically motivated.” So Johns Hopkins and The Lancet are mouthpieces for the DNC but the AEI (former employer of Mrs. Cheney) and Fox News (headed by Republican operative Roger Ailes)aren’t for the RNC? Puuhlleeeeeease!!
Next thing you know the Republicans will be claiming that reality is politically motivated (hat tip to Stephen Colbert).
October 11th, 2006 at 2:43:24 pm
“We’ve failed to make ourselves safer . . . .”
Ugh. I roll my eyes every time this silly talking point is trotted out, because to KNOW such a thing with anything approaching the degree if misplaced certainty with which war critics insist upon it requires an infinitely complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, to say nothing of constructing a complete alternate history of the world had the Iraq war not have occurred. We’re talking about counting angels on the head of a pin here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092500912.html
“Seems to me that we only have the word of the folks who have been there, and it appears to me that the majority of the people who have been there - soldiers, aid workers, journalists, John Warner - think things are getting worse.”
Heh. Seems to me that while journalists, politicians and aid workers may think things are getting worse (at the very least because each may very well have an agenda at work), SOLDIERS do NOT. Most of the accounts I’ve read from soldiers in Iraq diverge significantly from the accounts of those others. A&A, if you have some kind of poll or other resource to back up your claim that a majority of soldiers in Iraq think things are getting worse, I’d love to see it. But just because you think it’s so certainly doesn’t make it so . . .
October 11th, 2006 at 3:23:23 pm
Okay Joe, explain to me HOW it has made us more safe?
October 11th, 2006 at 3:30:19 pm
TIME OUT!!
This is fascinating and thank you for linking to it dcl. This is why:
I had already read this story and when I saw you post I figured I would talk about the survey especially since I noticed you didn’t comment on what experts and critics are saying about it. Due diligence though, I checked the link and instead of getting the AP story I read, I get CNN’s take on it.
Here is what AP said in the first two paragraphs:
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/10/D8KM6GL80.html
“A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates. The timing of the survey’s release, just a few weeks before the U.S. congressional elections, led one expert to call it “politics.”
In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.”
Now what did CNN say for the first two:
“War has wiped out about 655,000 Iraqis or more than 500 people a day since the U.S.-led invasion, a new study reports.
Violence including gunfire and bombs caused the majority of deaths but thousands of people died from worsening health and environmental conditions directly related to the conflict that began in 2003, U.S. and Iraqi public health researchers said.”
AP notes one critical expert (AP article lists him as Anthony Cordesman), the methodology used, and that there is a timing issue on the study. You have to get deep into the CNN story to find that. Also, CNN neglected to say this, again from AP:
“The work updates an earlier Johns Hopkins study _ that one was released just before the November 2005 presidential election. At the time, the lead researcher, Les Roberts of Hopkins, said the timing was deliberate. Many of the same researchers were involved in the latest estimate.”
So now, not only has this work been used politically, it has been released with a political motive. Further, this study conflicts with US, Iraqi, Civilian (i.e., Iraqi Body Count [no Bush lover at all]), and UN numbers.
So, the numbers conflict with multiple reputable (somewhat in the UN’s case) organizations that differ politically, its being released and timed for political purposes, there is disagreement over the methodology, and its entirely based through interviews, not statistics.
Can I get that kind of research grant?
October 11th, 2006 at 3:33:20 pm
As a quick conclusion, all told this is a fascinating case of working the story to fit an news frame by CNN and of bad methodology for political gain.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:57:32 pm
Angrier -
Pop Statistics Quiz:
Which number is the outlier?
A) 49,000 (The high estimate from Iraqi Body Count, private civilian group)
B) 25,000 (The estimate from the US Army)
C) 50,000 (Iraqi Health Ministry)
D) 600,000 (Lancet)
Now, are you telling me I have to throw out the three reputable ones and go with the outlier? Why? Because it fits your view on the war?
Here’s a little tidbit on the Lancet’s 2004 study, from that rightwing bastion, SLATE.COM:
http://www.slate.com/id/2108887/
“‘We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.’
Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I’ll spell it out in plain Englishâ€â€?which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain languageâ€â€?98,000â€â€?is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)
This isn’t an estimate. It’s a dart board.”
This study sucks. Period. I hope MIT gets their money back, because its a load of interview crap.
October 11th, 2006 at 5:34:48 pm
Lojo-
Pop Quiz-What was my original post about?
A. The accuracy of the figures.
B. How much I respect Joe Mama
C. The fact that Republicans are decrying this study as political even though it comes from a well-respected University and a medical journal with no political agenda to speak of?
Apparently you picked A. Wrong. Sorry. You lose.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:15:36 pm
“The fact that Republicans are decrying this study as political even though it comes from a well-respected University and a medical journal with no political agenda to speak of?”
The people who released their 2004 study admitted that the timing at least was, in fact, politically motivated. Lojo mentioned it earlier, but apparently you missed it. A lot of the same people are involved with this study.
So yes, it seems to me to be a fair criticism that it’s politically biased.
And for the record, the “study” polled a grand total of 629 deaths. Somehow they managed to extrapolate 655,000 deaths from that total of 629.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:57:06 pm
Angrier -
For the most part I am seeing the study called politically motivated (which is a forgone conclusion since researchers admit as such). I see that I have referenced Lancet when referring to the study so I apologize for the lack of clarity. Consider the following a correction in that my comments are directed towards the study. I am unconcerned about the Lancet’s or John Hopkin’s or MIT’s motives behind it, though I have to question their determination to fund an update after the first one was so heavily discredited and critically panned.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:57:07 pm
“Validation of cluster sampling methodologies as an appropriate alternative to simple random sampling is difficult in conflict situations.”
From page three of the Appendices .pdf.
This seems to say that this methodology is not validated for conflict situation.
If this is the case, why the attention?
October 11th, 2006 at 7:59:08 pm
Mike -
Actually, it was about 300 deaths. The 655,000 figure refers to violent deaths and in their study, they extrapoliated that from a number of about high 300’s (I forget the exact off the top of my head).
October 11th, 2006 at 8:58:31 pm
If you go with the U.S. Military numbers, 25,000 Iraqis have died as a result of this war. That is about half of the number of Americans who die each year in auto accidents on U.S. roads. Also, 25,000 is a little more than the number of U.S. troops who have been wounded in Iraq. May I remind you that the U.S. Military is the best equipped and trained Military in the world, so wounding 22,000+ in three years without bombers, cruise missiles or tow missiles is quite an accomplishment.
I have a very hard time believing that three years of constant warfare, with dozens if not hundreds of bodies showing up on the streets of Baghdad everyday, has resulted in so few deaths in Iraq. If you want to doubt the Lancet methodology, then by God you’d better question the U.S. Military methodology as well.
October 11th, 2006 at 9:39:12 pm
Glad to see that you appear to have some perspective on the numbers of casualties in Iraq, Max. It’s just too bad that between the choices of concluding that 1) those numbers are relatively low, so perhaps things aren’t quite as bad in Iraq as we’re led to believe, or 2) those numbers are relatively low, so Bush/the gov’t/the military must be cooking the books, you’ve chosen to believe the latter.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:42:43 am
The numbers from the Lancet article represent “excess” deaths, as opposed to straight killings. That doesn’t mean that the US military would have to be explicity responsible; it means total deaths due to factors such as lack of clean water, lack of power, “insurgent” killings or whatever we’re calling ethnic and religious cleansings these days, etc.
The methodology has in fact been used in other recent wars. It’s challenging to get a straight sample in a war zone, hence the use of cluster sampling. This is not an outrageous approach.
An earlier poster asked why they should believe the outlier number. The numbers cited were not comparable measures. The Iraqi Body Count is based on press accounts that can be cross-referenced. I have no idea what the Iraqi Health Ministry estimates are based on. As for the US Army figures, well considering that General Franks said that they don’t do body counts, then presumably that is an estimate as well, based on something other than hard body counts.
I’d also point out that it’s in the interest of the Bush Administration and to a lesser extent the Joint Chiefs to not draw attention to the probable affects of applying traditional warfighting tactics to a counter-insurgency conflict. When the war started and was state v state, shock and awe bombing could only have been but so precise. Now, calling in localized airstrikes on houses sheltering actual or suspected insurgents on a daily basis means that civilians are getting killed on a daily basis, for being in the way. I am NOT making a judgement on the individual troops; they didn’t put themselves in that situation.
Long story short, I don’t know if 655,000 more Iraqis have died than might have otherwise had the US not invaded. But ripple effects could have very easily hastened many deaths, just as was the case during the years of sanctions when the Hussein regime stayed fat and watched infant mortality etc., skyrocket. And the fact that there are varying estimates of different populations of the dead doesn’t mean that any higher number is automatically wrong.
October 12th, 2006 at 2:19:57 am
Actual deaths reported to the Lancet: under 600. Nice extrapolation.
I’m going to go with the 50,000 number from the Iraqi health ministry; it tracks well with Iraq Body Count, which isn’t exactly pro-war.
October 12th, 2006 at 3:08:29 am
Guys - think about how they did their study …
They chose cluster sampling … OK …
They describe how accurate it can be … OK …
They describe how they select their sample … “The total population is then divided by the number of clusters to give the sampling interval. If we were to visit 30 clusters in a county with a population of 120,000, our sampling interval would be 120,000 ÷ 30 = 4000. This means every 4000th person in the county would live in one of the clusters we will want to visit. We then list all the towns in the county by their population (in any order). Our first cluster is the town where person 4000 lives, our second cluster is in the town where person 8000 lives, the third cluster is where person 12,000 lives, and so on until we have our 30 clusters. We really don’t need to know who person 4000 is, just the town where he or she lives.” … and so on … OK …
So that is 26,000,000 for 50 samples … 26,000,000/50 = 520,000 … OK so far …
Let’s try a gedanken …
Let us apply their methodology to number of folk killed by vehicles in cross-walks at traffic-light-controlled intersections …
What is that, you say ? “But, places less than 520,000 population will have very few of those intersections !” “You will oversample from very urban areas, which will bias you towards higher numbers than really occur.” “In Amish communities, on Native American reservations, in Alaska, over most of Kansas or Montana, how many will you find ?” …
OK … so apply equivalent thought to the report … Baghdad alone has not quite 25% of the country’s population and gets 12 clusters … the 8 provinces with the lowest populations are approximately the same total as Baghdad - and get 7 clusters for 8 provinces … and with a little arithmetic, we find an interesting comparison in the numbers …
Baghdad - 13K-65K fatalities … lowest 8 provinces - 6.8K-41.3K fatalities …
So - IF the survey methodology is SO accurate, where the $@$#@ does the low end almost-doubling to high end 50% higher actually come from for roughly equivalent population numbers ?
Or - if you’re still convinced by the report, consider comparing the map in page 9 of the study with this map …
Then consider that this is the Lancet’s second October no-longer-a-surprise …
Still convinced ?
October 12th, 2006 at 7:00:25 am
Max -
I would accept that except that the Army and the study use two different sets of methodology. The army is counting by bodies, combat reports, and morgue counts. The study entirely uses interviews with civilian families.
Furthermore, it does not even attempt to distinguish between whether a death is for a combatant or non-combatant. An important distinction I would think.
I’m not jumping on this study because of the results. I can accept and will review bad news and news contradictory to my own position, but this study is deeply flawed. I think the Army is undercutting the count and I think 50,000 is a fair estimate. But 12x that? No way.
October 12th, 2006 at 9:48:32 am
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casualties.html?ex=1318219200&en=a8b58a972ff83c14&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
“Robert Blendon, director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, said interviewing urban dwellers chosen at random was “the best of what you can expect in a war zone.â€?
But he said the number of deaths in the families interviewed � 547 in the post-invasion period versus 82 in a similar period before the invasion � was too few to extrapolate up to more than 600,000 deaths across the country.
Donald Berry, chairman of biostatistics at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was even more troubled by the study, which he said had “a tone of accuracy that’s just inappropriate.â€? ”
This study is trash.
October 12th, 2006 at 3:11:19 pm
DC Trojan - “I am NOT making a judgement {sic} on the individual troops; they didn’t put themselves in that situation.” - perhaps you *should* be making a judgment on the individual troops (who are the “insurgency”) who put themselves amongst the civilians so as to use the civilians as ‘human shields’ … if the “insrugents were not putting themselves in the situation of being amongst the civilians, then the civilians would not be being killed in anything like the numbers about which we are all unhappy …
You might also consider that, if the “insurgents” stopped all attacks for the next year, how many civilians would the Coalition Troops kill during that year ?
If the Coalition Troops stopped all attacks for the next year, do you have *any* reason to believe that the “insurgents” would stop attacking civilians and anyone else they felt like attacking ?
October 12th, 2006 at 8:11:59 pm
So this is what a complete chump looks like. Thanks for the demo.
(Claiming the people who released the October 2004 fantasy “study” about “100,000 civilian deaths caused by the invasion” have “no political agenda to speak of” marks you as either utterly clueless or dishonest. Which is it?
Sorry, but teh rest of your post isn’t worth responding to. You’re, at best, a chump who is utterly clueless about the world. Nothing you say matters.
October 12th, 2006 at 8:37:53 pm
Wow ! Talk about arriving, hitting the ground running ! (grin)
Greg D - ummm - to *which* chump are you directing your incisive commentary ?
October 16th, 2006 at 5:39:23 pm
www.iraqbodycount.org, often criticized for offering inflated civilian death figures, is now criticizing the Lancet study for offering inflated civilian death figures:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php
(Hat tip, Instapundit)